redbubble @https://www.redbubble.com/people/CariykonArt @jenicoon's wife - art tag: 'cariykon's stuff' - i do not consent to any of my art being minted as a NFT
loosely inspired by when i went for a casual walk this saturday afternoon and passed someone wearing this exact outfit. i was in my sweatshirt with the Grinch and his dog Max and Cindy Lou Who printed on it. horrifying. she was so well-dressed. if only i had gone on a fancy walk instead!!
When Rumi was seven, with baby fat laden cheeks and the barest beginnings of gangly limbs growing, she lost both canine teeth at the same time. It was charming and adorable and Celine still keeps a picture of Rumi drinking with a straw through one of the gaps as her phone background.Ā
What was not cute were the six months of midnight trips to the hospital from tooth growing pains.Ā
Rumi remembers one night in particular; sitting in the lobby of a random rural clinic, clutching Celineās hand as hard as she could. Screaming and coughing hordes of people and their children shuffled around them like packs of cattle, the ringing of phones, the ever-growing annoying beeping of pagers; all at an ungodly hour that pulls at the eyes.
She recalls how her head throbbed with a fever induced headache not at all helped by the swarming fluorescent above. The revolving doors let in waves of frigid air only to be quickly swallowed by the sweaty cluster of packed bodies. How Celine had to cram her into her winter coat she had suddenly outgrown and was now digging up into her armpits.Ā
She even remembered how everything towered over her, the receptionist desk, the water fountain, the crowds of strangers around them, even the chair she sat in had made her feel like she was sitting on the edge of a cliff. All while her gums scorched with tear inducing pain.Ā
It was no wonder she started crying. She tried to be strong, really. Even then, Rumi didnāt want to cause a scene, to keep her head down and go home as fast as possible. But she just couldnāt do it. She was tired, sick, but no matter how hard she wanted to be a ābig girlā the tears came anyway.Ā
Despite her memory being tinged with both fever and time, the feeling of it is still there. As tactile as when it happened. Celineās hands, cut up and calloused, colored a raw raspberry red with winterās might, gently pulling the ratās nest of tangled hair out from Rumiās slept-in braid. Not once hurting. Wiping away the sweat and flyawayās from her face.Ā
Despite the cramped space, Celine kneeled in front of her and helped Rumi shimmy off her jacket, the pressure release immediately making her shoulders relax.Ā
But most of all Rumi remembered Celine picking her up, despite her already being too big and too old, and pulling Rumi into her lap. Her head tucked up under Celineās chin, her legs comically hanging out the now too-small hospital chair, and how Celineās heart pounded in her ear.Ā
It's after that, that things quickly got fuzzy. She was seven, exhausted, and ill. Sleep came with a vengeance that no one could stop. But the last thing she did recall, was a quiet hum reverberating from Celineās chest and vibrating through her tiny body.Ā
It is that memory alone that keeps Rumi from losing her shit when she sees the fangs in the mirror.Ā
UNPROVOKED???? ohhhhh this is. this is so. i don't have the words. thankfully ā i have hands. to counterattack with
she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parentās driveway.Ā
after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which weād unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.
(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)
anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me.Ā
now, iād seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before ā it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable.Ā
so i said hey.Ā
and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like sheād been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had.Ā
and i said itās okay. you can just say it. iāll be okay.
iām always okay.Ā
and she said: iām really sorry.Ā
i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things donāt stop existing just because they're different. opposite really ā a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.
and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on.Ā
so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighborās car.Ā
crunch.Ā
air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldnāt tell if i did anything to my car ā anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle.Ā
i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasnāt particularly conscious of keeping it charged.Ā both my fault.
i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done.Ā
then i went back to knock on my now exās front door.Ā
her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now.Ā
(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)
and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighborās car, and i need to call my dad, but my phoneās dead. could i borrow yours?
and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone. Ā
and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably wouldāve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said
stay out here ā iāll bring you a phone.
and then he left. Ā
i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that heād gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.
then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.
he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighborās house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.
then we left.
i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:
brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in it, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.
and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.
---
the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, iād stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. iād take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember.Ā
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